


Flashbacks

by aidail



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: I mean more awful than usual, Not Canon Compliant, Other, The Dursleys are awful, Why Did I Write This?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-24 01:18:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13202604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aidail/pseuds/aidail
Summary: What if Harry never made it to the train because the Dursleys are awful





	Flashbacks

Severus Snape swirled his goblet absently, doing his best not to sneer at the man beside him. The new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher was attempting to tell some tale about an encounter with a vampire in Transylvania. It might almost have been interesting if the man could make it through a single sentence without stuttering. As it was, the speaker rendered each sentence almost unbearable and Snape wondered idly how the students would fare. Not that he cared for them, but it was enough to have him questioning Dumbledore’s choices yet again. 

Snape let his attention wander across the hall, but still kept his face half turned towards the speaker. Quirrel might be an intolerable storyteller, but there was something about him, something Snape didn’t quite trust enough to dismiss him entirely. Thus he missed the first signs that something was amiss. 

Indeed the signs were subtle enough. Professor McGonagall’s presence in the hall was far from unexpected at this point, and only someone who knew her very well would detect that something was wrong. The steady gait was a little faster, the stern expression just a little sterner, something more severe about the downwards turned corner of her mouth, not quite a frown, but a carefully controlled sign of something concerning. 

Dumbledore noticed her first, as she made her way back towards the teacher’s table at the head of the hall. His reaction was even more muted than McGonagall’s, but Snape was tuned into the headmasters every move. Ten years had not been enough to dull his caution around the wizard, even as he knew Dumbledore’s eye was always on him in return. He looked past his poor conversation partner and watched the interaction with feigned indifference. 

McGonagall spoke quietly to Dumbledore and his reply was equally muffled. A few sharp gestures were all Snape could see, but it was enough to tell him that there was some argument happening. To any student in the hall it would appear to be nothing more than McGonagall informing the headmaster of the first years arrival in the outer hall, a regular occurrence at the start of a new school year. The deputy headmistress’s discretion was admirable, and Snape had to conceded the grudging respect he felt towards her. 

Not to be outdone, Snape unobtrusively exited the hall, leaving a somewhat startled Quirrel in mid-stutter. Should this disturbance require his intervention, it would draw less suspicion if he was absent from the hall before, rather than after, McGonagall spoke to him. Let it not be said Snape could not learn from greater masters. 

As he suspected, a somewhat livid McGonagall and, much to his surprise, an even more irate Hagrid, joined him in the outer hall. Snape looked at the both with easily concealed curiosity. An arched eyebrow was his only invitation to speak, but McGonagall didn’t require any more. 

“Harry wasn’t on the train.” She said brusquely, trusting Snape would need no further explanation, and indeed he didn’t.   
“Ruddy muggles must’ve stopped him, “ Hagrid thundered angrily.   
Snape turned a sardonic eye upon the giant.   
“Perhaps he simply lacked the wit to find the platform?” He enquired silkily and was rewarded with a blush from the groundskeeper.   
“Ah well, I mean…” Hagrid stuttered, not quite meeting anyone’s eye.   
McGonagall’s gaze turned sharp.   
“You did tell him how to find the platform did you not?” She enquired incredulously, though her expression belied her tone, clearly expecting a negative reply. 

The only answer was more stuttering from Hagrid and Snape wondered idly if it was contagious. 

Thankfully, Hagrid recovered himself and drew up to his thoroughly impressive height, sticking his hands through his belt.   
“I guess I better go and get him then.” He said resolutely, and made as if to stride out the doors right then and there.   
A soft noise from McGonnagall was enough to stop him in his tracks. 

“Forgive me for mentioning it Hagrid, but I believe time is of the essence?” McGonnagall said lightly, and Hagrid had the grace to look abashed.   
“Of course professor.” He said sheepishly.   
That’s when McGonnagall turned her gaze on Snape, and he saw the shape of his evening unfold. He suppressed to groan of distaste with effort and instead met her sharp gaze with a look of equal steel. 

“The headmaster would like you to collect him.” McGonnagall said firmly, tone suggesting no argument would be brooked. 

It irked him, as he recognized it as the same tone she used on unruly students, the same tone she’d used on him when he was student. Though they’d become almost amicable through the years, times like this reminded him that the deputy headmistress was very much his former teacher, when she made him feel as much the boy he’d been when he first set foot in the castle. 

Still, despite the tone, he’d learned to read her well enough to tell this decision hadn’t been reached without some argument on her part. Potter was as yet unsorted, but he knew McGonagall already secretly counted him part of her house. Though family was by no means a definite indicator of house loyalty, it was true that it did tend to run in families, and as the son of two proud Gryffindors, two of her own favourite students, Snape didn’t blame her for the assumption. She was welcome to it. 

It was hardly as if he desired the boy in his own house. Though maybe his life would be easier in the future if the boy possessed some amount of cunning. Even docile Hufflepuff, or even better, the intelligent and cautious Ravenclaws would be better news for him. He could foresee nothing but trouble for any child in Gryffindor. But this evening was already proving that Harry Potter was destined to be the death of him, and he was unlikely to receive a moment’s peace in the meantime. 

That considered, he could see the headmaster’s logic. The deputy headmistress’s duty as the one to read the names for the sorting hat was long entrenched in the school’s traditions, and if she were absent, students would wonder at her loss. Snape on the other hand could be trusted with the mission, while his absence would draw little suspicion, if it were even noticed. Those who did would only count themselves lucky for the reprieve, he thought sulkily. 

It was therefore only a halfhearted attempt, made more from spite than true defiance when he fixed the most bored look upon his face and stared down at the headmistress.   
“Must I?” he drawled, all his contempt evident in his tone.   
He saw Hagrid bristle but McGonagall just smiled up at him. He often prided himself on his subtlety, but McGonagall had always been able to see right through him. 

“He’s likely back home by now, if indeed he did get lost,” was her only reply, before escorting a still seething Hagrid back into the hall. 

Snape sighed to himself before he made his way quietly across the hall and out the front doors. The wind blew his cloak around him as he strode across the grounds. His choice to walk to beyond the wards in order to apparate, rather than using the hall fire to floo to Hogsmeade, was pure childish spite on his part. 

He had no desire to see the child that had caused him so much pain and grief already. But he was also seized for a morbid curiosity to see what the boy looked like now. He’d only seen him the once, a squalling infant in the ruins of a house. He’d left him there, secure in the knowledge that the child would soon fall into the hands of someone far more capable than he to deal with the boy’s distress. 

He’d made no attempt to see the child since. A single glance had been enough to guess which parents he would favor. In a way it was almost a mercy. To look into the face of his old tormentor would surely be the better of the two evils. He didn’t know if he would be able to bear looking at a face that resembled hers. Whether his remaining sanity would crumble, or he would curse the child simply for looking at him was a question he preferred remained unanswered. 

It was cold for September, but he found that suited him just fine. This night had been one he’d been dreading for a while. While the pain never faded, he had been able to cover it with the dull drudgery of students too stupid to be worth teaching, and essays that made him despair of the ideal the wizards were indeed superior. 

Something about reading a student who managed to take everything he had meticulously taught them, and then twist it into something where every single word was wrong was both a wonder and enough to drive a far better man than he to drink. It was his own private opinion that the wizarding war in fact could have been avoided entirely if Dumbledore had simply let Voldemort teach for a semester. It would have been enough to disillusion even him of the superiority, or even basic intelligence, of the wizarding race. 

But this year, he was going to be forced to teach him. The boy was a reminder of every mistake he’d ever made and everything he’d lost through those mistakes. In his entire life there had been one thing that had been good and he’d lost it because of that boy. It was an unforgivable sin, and to think of that reminder sitting in his classroom every week had made him dread the start of school even more than usual. 

Still. Even he had to admit, the boy belonged at Hogwarts. At least here he would be safe. If even half of Dumbledore’s predictions were true, and Snape had good reason to believe it was more than half, they’d need the boy in the future. So even as he dawdled, he never considered failing in his task. 

He already knew the boy’s address. As soon as he felt himself to be out of the castle’s warding, his spun neatly on his heel, robes whirling around him and arrived on Privet Drive. It was just past dark, and he knew there was little chance of being seen in the uncertain light. He set his shoulders resolutely and strode purposefully towards the little house marked number 4. The tidy lawn irked him and he suppressed the irrational urge to muddy it. A large white owl was perched on the chimney, but he paid it no mind.

He let his face settle into an unpleasant glower, any regard for first impressions dismissed without consideration. One member of this household at least would already know to fear him. 

He restrained himself from entering the house unwelcomed, though only barely. The sooner he had the boy in hand, the sooner he could deliver him to Hogwarts and call his duty done, at least for one night. But he forced himself to raise a hand and knock civilly, though he did resolve to give them only to the count of twelve before he gave in to his worse impulses. 

It was lucky then that a man opened the door with admirable punctuality. As Snape gazed down at the unpleasant face of Vernon Dursley, he immediately determined that the speed with which he opened the door must be the only decent quality the man possessed. 

The effect on Vernon Dursley on opening his front door only to be confronted with the glowering form of a very irate Severus Snape can only be imagined. The wizard was unpleasant enough on a pleasant day, and this was far from a pleasant day. To make matters worse, he was unaccountably a wizard, from his robe and cloak to his poorly concealed wand, and Dursley had had more than enough encounters with wizards recently to make him equally unpleasant. 

Unsurprisingly then, Dursley immediately lost what little esteem he had gained with his punctuality by immediately slamming the door in Snape’s face. It was perhaps fortunate that Vernon did not see Snape’s vindictive smile as he drew his wand. But rather than blast down the door like some boorish Gryffindor, he simply charmed it to swing open of its own accord and swept into the entry way impatiently. 

He fixed Dursley with a cold sneer, an art he’d perfected that turned lesser men than Vernon Dursley into puddles, and spoke softly.   
“I’m here to collect Harry Potter.” 

It was a statement filled with all the considerable menace Snape possessed, and indeed he was more than willing to follow through on any threat his tone implied. He enjoyed venting his frustrations on other people, and this muggle’s rudeness was more than enough of an excuse. It didn’t help that he was starting to suspect that Dursley was responsible for the necessity of this little errand in the first place. 

In his turn, Vernon was sputtering and turning purple. He was used to intimidating others with his presence, and he had no appreciation for subtlety. Hagrid’s size and blustering had gone a deal further in subduing the Dursley, and Snape’s quiet declaration, for all its intended malice, did little in comparison. 

“How dare you!” Vernon yelled, stepping forward and shoving his ugly mug into Snape’s face. “Get out of my house!”   
Snape only response was a single raised eyebrow, for him enough of a display of contempt. But again, it was too subtle a reaction for Vernon, who supposed his outburst had simply scared the wizard stiff. 

“You deaf? I said get out of my house!” Vernon roared again, an unfortunate amount of spittle hitting Snape.   
That was a line crossed, and Snape’s stillness was broken in a blur of movement. A few waves of his wand and Snape was once again free of bodily fluids, and Vernon had been shoved against the wall. Snape spared him a sneer as he swept past him. 

Absently, he wondered if Dumbledore had bothered to inform the Ministry that a wizard would be in the neighborhood, or if any magic would be waved off as incidental magic on Potter’s part. Of course, there was no reason Potter should still be in this house on the first day of school, but Snape didn’t pretend to know how the Ministry determined such details. Either way, he dismissed it as Dumbledore’s problem. 

A spell uttered silently directed him towards the cupboard under the stairs, and Snape’s consternation grew as he noticed a large and shiny padlock holding it shut. Such a device was of course child’s plays to a wizard, but Snape drew a measure of satisfaction of turning back towards Dursley, who’d followed him, and pointing with renewed menace to the lock. 

“Open it.” He ordered sharply, and this time Dursley wasted no time in complying.   
It seemed force really was the key to the muggle’s skills o comprehension.   
Still, after the lock was taken off the cupboard door, Dursley still blocked his way, and attempted a more reasonable attitude. 

“Now look here, just because the boy got accepted to that blasted school doesn’t mean we have to send him…”Vernon tried persuading.   
He thought he was rather good at persuading, but this time even he couldn’t miss the outright contempt Snape’s expression conveyed. Indeed, Snape didn’t even dignify the muggle’s plea with a response this time, instead flicking his wand. The cupboard door swung open, and Snape was transported back in time. 

Snape’s sharp eyes took in every detail. The boy’s clothes were shabby at best, and hung too big on his skinny frame. His glasses were cracked and in poor repair, and there was a fresh bruise darkening one eye. The cupboard bore obvious signs of habitation, albeit the spider webs looked equally fresh. A few broken toys, scraps of paper and clothes shoved in a corner told a story and as Snape looked down at the child of Lily Evans and James Potter, he was reminded of no one so much as himself. 

Of course, the resemblance to Potter was unmistakable, but where his messy hair had been carefully and obviously cultivated, Harry’s had the painful look of neglect. The oversized shirt reminded Snape of an oversized coat from long ago, and the rope marks on his wrist, those were the most familiar of all. Snape looked from Lily’s grass green eyes into the slowly purpling face of Vernon Dursley, and barely concealed malice became true malevolence. 

With the illusion of calmness, Snape stepped back and observed the house for the first time. Such trivialities were usually lost on him, beyond escape points and lines of sight (he had been a spy after all), but now he really looked. The house was immaculate, the photos on the mantel perfectly spaced, not a speck of dust anywhere. The photos themselves contained images of a seemingly perfect family: Father, mother and son. No sign of another boy existed in this house. 

He looked back at the closet, filled with dust and neglect and read the boy’s entire childhood in a glance. He knew because it had been his own: unwanted, despised, ignored. 

A small noise alerted him to the presence of another person, and he whirled around, wand raised to see a familiar figure. Snape looked down at the woman he had not seen in almost fifteen years, since they’d both been children, and he saw double. He saw the shape of a jaw, the arch of a cheekbone, the ghost of his ruined heart echoed back at him within his own breast. And he saw his mother, weak, cowardly, with the power to protect him, protect herself, but lacking the will to try. Neither recollection inclined him towards civility, which aligned perfectly with his own natural inclination. 

Severus Snape had never been a man of great impulse control. His nastiest thoughts frequently escaped his lips with no regard of their consequences, and a lifetime of dislike and neglect had left him with few good qualities to recommend him. Only his own sense of self-preservation prevented him from acting on the worst of his impulses. Murdering muggles was difficult to get away with, no matter how skillfully hidden, and no doubt Dumbledore would eventually notice if he murdered Potter’s guardians. 

So instead, he forced himself to composure. He exercised what little restraint he had and instead stunned the muggles. He had plans from them, but those would come later. Right now, his concern was still tied up in the cupboard.

Snape made no effort to appear less intimidating as he ducked back into the cupboard. He didn’t wish to garner any admiration from the boy. He was less than gentle as he undid the ropes around the boy’s wrists, though he did magic the duct tape away painlessly. 

Finally freed and able to speak, the boy bombarded him with questions that not even a severe look and menacing silence could quell. Clearly McGonnagall would get her wish for another Gryffindor. Potter did however manage to hold his tongue when he saw his aunt and uncle passed out in the hallway. He even went so far as to make an aborted movement for his wand, pointless as he cleary didn’t have it on him. Foolish Gryffindor indeed, Snape thought, though the thought was touched with a hint of amusement than he was accustomed to. 

Finally he addressed the boy.   
“My name is Professor Snape. Professor Dumbledore sent me to collect you.”   
He said shortly. The boy gaped at him momentarily before squaring his shoulders and facing Snape properly.   
“What did you do to my aunt and uncle?” Harry asked, doing an admirable job of quelling the quaver in his voice. 

Snape suppressed the urge to roll his eyes.   
“They were being singularly disagreeable,” he replied before relenting, “don’t worry, they’re merely stunned.”   
The boy didn’t look terribly reassured, but Snape’s patience, never great to begin with, had officially run out. The night had been far more than he’d bargained for, and he wasn’t even close to done.   
“Where are your school supplies?” He asked sharply. 

Harry stared at the floor and put his hands in his pockets.  
“They burned it.” He said quietly.   
Snape felt a new wave of murderous intent wash over him but he took a deep breath instead, even as his hand twitched around his wand.   
“Your wand as well?” He asked evenly, tone not betraying his rage.   
Thankfully the boy shook his head.   
“No, I hid it,” he admitted. “That’s why they tied me up. They’ve never done that before.” 

Snape was again forced to take in the young boy before him. James Potter’s son through and through, but James had never been that sickly pale and skinny, and he’d certainly never worn anything that could be described as rags. Snape pinched the bridge of his nose tiredly. 

“Get your wand. Meet me outside” He said brusquely, turning on his heel and sweeping out of the orderly house. 

He didn’t want to pity Potter. He didn’t want to feel even the smallest connection. The boy was responsible for the death of the only person he’d ever loved. There could be no forgiveness for that. Worse, now the ghost of his own childhood would cling to the boy forever. He’d been predisposed to think the boy arrogant and entitled like his father, but no amount of self-delusion would allow him to remove the image of the boy in his cupboard from his mind. 

His lip curled viciously, and he almost walked away right then. Let Dumbledore deal with this. If the man had been doing his job, this never would have happened. But then, the idea that Dumbledore knew and let it happen anyway rang too true for him to ignore. Potter was the Boy Who Lived, the Saviour of the wizarding world. Dumbledore probably knew what the boy ate for breakfast. 

Snape looked back at the house, wishing he could burn the whole thing down, or better yet, wipe his own memory. He wished he’d never come here. It suited him to hate Potter from afar, to imagine him the conceited, pampered child he’d always imagined he would be. He didn’t want to see Lily’s eyes widened in pain and fear. He’d never wanted that. 

Harry walked out onto the lawn, looking pathetically thin. But he had a smile on his face and the hand gripping his wand was steady. Snape considered him for a moment before holding out an arm.   
“Hold tight Potter. This will be uncomfortable.”  
It was all the warning he gave before he apparated them both outside the grounds of Hogwarts. 

Snape could feel rather than see the boys eyes widen at the sight of the castle. He remembered the first time he’d seen it, reflected in the lake as he’d been crammed in a boat with several other first years. He shook his head to dislodge the memory and marched towards the gates, leaving the boy to stumble along after him. He refused to speak as he crossed the grounds, heading towards the castle, no matter how many inane questions the boy asked. 

He maintained his silence as he led the boy up the main staircase, winding higher and higher through the castle. Ideally he’d be taking the boy to the feast. He looked as if he could use a few good meals. But his late arrival would already require too many answers to too many questions. Better to take him straight to the headmaster’s office. 

They finally stopped outside the Griffin statue and Snape snapped the password impatiently. That was the first time he looked back at the boy since they arrived. His eyes were wide and he was looking around him in wonder and awe. Snape allowed himself a moment to remember that, being raised by muggles, this was no doubt the first time Harry had seen anything like Hogwarts. It gave Snape a dry pleasure to deny him the opportunity for site seeing as he’d marched them through the castle. 

They stepped onto the winding staircase and Snape relaxed fractionally. Harry Potter had been safely delivered to Hogwarts, and in just a few more minutes, he would no longer be Snape’s problem. 

Dumbledore’s office was empty when they entered. Snape wasn’t surprised. It had been scarcely an hour since he’d first left, though it felt like longer. He opened the doors, which swung open easily at his touch. Dumbledore was no doubt aware of his entry, though he would remain at the feast until it was over. Appearances were everything after all. No doubt Dumbledore already had some story planned to cover Harry’s absence at the start of year feast. 

Snape gestured towards a chair.   
“Sit.”   
The single syllable was uttered with barely restrained hostility and he was unsurprised but pleased when the boy obeyed immediately.   
“Wait here. Do not. Touch anything,” he added, grabbing the boys hand just for a moment, as Potter reached for one of the spindly intruments whose function escaped even the Potions master.   
“Professor Dumbledore will be here soon. He will explain everything.” Snape added shortly, already heading for the door. He paused at the threshold, looking back at the boy. 

On impulse, he waved his wand and a plate of sandwiches appeared on Dumbledore’s desk. It wasn’t quite the start of year feast, but it was better than nothing. A tall glass of pumpkin juice appeared alongside it.   
“Eat.” 

Then he was gone. 

Snape didn’t return to the feast. Dumbledore would be able to question the boy. He had no further use for Snape tonight. But Snape still had business to attend to. 

Tomorrow he could go back to hating the boy. But tonight, Severus Snape had one last task. If pressed, Snape would deny it was done for the boy’s benefit. Rather, it was his own violent feelings that compelled him. 

Still. 

Snape had been powerless as a boy too often. He was no longer powerless. 

He started with Petunia. Murdering muggles might earn a one-way ticket to Azkaban, but Oblivating them? That was practically encouraged by the Ministry, so scared they were of muggle discovery. 

True, altering memories rather than simply deleting them took a little more skill, but Snape was accomplished in the art of the mind, and here he did his best work. Petunia might be a nosy, snappish, gossipy woman, but she had cared for baby Harry, bathed him and fed him, cared for him as an infant. There was enough for him to work with, enough loyalty to a dead sister and enough sympathy for a scrawny orphan that he could build a new tale. 

That tale did not involve Vernon Dursley. Abusive, angry, bullying, and worse, scared of magic, he would not be tolerated. Snape did what he wished he could have done for his own contemptible mother, and gave Petunia the strength to leave. Gave her memories of forcing Vernon to pack his bags, to pay child support, to sign the divorce papers. In short, he neatly exorcised Vernon Dursley from her life like a surgeon removing a cancer, memory by memory, cell by cell until there was nothing left but an old scar. When he was done with the Dursley’s, they were a very different family from what they had been. 

He stepped back out into the night and crossed the Dursley’s perfect front lawn one last time. Tomorrow he could go back to hating Harry Potter. But tonight, he’d made sure the Boy Who Lived would never have to return to an abusive household ever again. 

He hoped somewhere, wherever she was, Lily might finally forgive him.


End file.
